mortalitymorbidity

Rain flood falls fade
symphony of petals
behind feet in death's forest
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Step toughened soles
sleep beds of moss
bathe pools of lotus
fall ash at dusk
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The postman is dead
his clothes fondly grow moss
out on the twine wash-line
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Chastened fists their light-less
fissures threaten the crests
and crusts of fractures
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Absolute chaos
Weltering amidst the throng
Sidewalks take beatings
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Shine wan city lights
one boulder sits in the lake
lost faces to walls
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Vomit on shore rocks
drunk's protege finds
the bridge suicide topless
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Last scarlet petal
wilted, un-silken, pressed to
stale attar of rose

exchange

"I love the way you look at me. It's so innocent."
"No matter what they say, your love is a torrent of purity in me."

Fung Wah Ghost

The windows begin to chirp. Bulbs toward the belly of the bus are green as pool lights in an algae-coated night. They comfort her. She longs to be tiny as a child floating over the seats, parting hair as she went, brushing eyelashes with the most tenderness she could bare. She could invisibly touch strangers' wrists together, place their heartbeats into the same rhythm. If she rides long enough, everything will be possible. --- Billboard for The Cremation Society advertises: Cremation. Simple. Dignified. Affordable. Just as she is thinking how nice it would be have some one fall asleep on her breast. How deeply she wishes to comfort. How cold she feels without a body. Heat is anonymous. When she left the seat and as another took it, all the heat spoke for no one.

sunburn

At the party. Seven shots to dull an ache from the sun. He was sunburnt. In the kitchen, she slapped his damaged face. Watching as her hand blanched in his skin, she apologized instantly. She had only wanted to prevent him from some careless racist outletting. How had the conversation moved so far from a full-figured syrup bottle? And for slapping a sunburnt man in public, she is awarded an odd flirtation. No more than a moment's silence between them and a spectator is introducing himself with "I don't mean to be forward, but who are you?" His undertone of desire not well masked by rum and coke, causes her pause baffled by a man who admires a violent woman. Her abused man explains her place, her relationship to blood and body. While the stranger convinced himself he'd made a sufficiently bold impression, he failed to see her following their host's bare feet. In her mind: What could that deformity be? Gout, she thought but would never mention it to him. He was a barefoot devotee and the state of disease even would not see him shod. Inwardly, she finds this irrationality adimirable.--- Energies moved around her directed by stale gingersnap cookies, orange vodka and powered lemonade pink. References to films were exchanged. Stories about- what else but- heterosexual sex were told. Hearing them hurt her. She couldn't laugh at faux pas, at dysfunction. In her fantasy, intimacy was for true lovers, private and compassionate. Everywhere around her it was violence, power plays, crudeness and meaningless amusement. In her past, it had been abuse. And so she can not so much as giggle at the party, at the boy fanatically telling some shocking tale of fellatio. The evening, as always, will come to a quiet close. The sunburnt man will be unable to don his shoes. One of her own will be stolen temporarily and thrown behind a television cabinet. All sorts out, all leave from the doors they entered in, in the attire they arrived in. Our host remains barefoot--- In the morning three types of eyes greet hers. Cardboard of pirates, plastic of green soldiers shouldering toothpick bayonettes, glass of strung-up troll dolls. There are too human eyes about the room, but these she chooses to avoid. Walks out on them for a morning pastry. Sips at tap water. Feels the lard and water resist one another. When she lives at home, she is clad in rose oil and silk at dawn. If she never got lonely, she could stay that way. Why does her company need smell of grain sweat, clay and immaturity? They are the most touchable. And touch can heal her.